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About Adrienne Erin

Adrienne is a freelance writer and designer who has always been interested in developments in the search marketing industry. You can see more of her work by following her on Twitter at @adrienneerin or checking out her design blog.

On April 21, Google rolled out another potentially game-changing update for webmasters. Dubbed “Mobilegeddon,” the update caused the world’s top search engine to prioritize websites that pass Google’s criteria for “mobile-friendliness.” In other words, if your website can’t “snap” itself to fit a phone’s tiny screen, or a mobile visitor has to do a significant amount of resizing and scrolling to view your site, there’s a good chance your site will be penalized.Read more...

It seems like everyone jumped on the infographic bandwagon over the past year and a half. Used properly, they’re a great way to spread the word about a company and drive traffic to a site. However, all too often, infographics are not given the time and effort they need to be effective. I often see so-called infographics that offer little more than a stick figure and a couple random facts that anyone with access to Google could find. These “crapographics” give real infographics a bad name.Read more...

Data or web scraping is a technique that gathers colossal amounts of information from search engines, websites, databases and other locations around the web. Formerly out of reach for small businesses and individuals, there are now lots of free and inexpensive tools that can scrape thousands of pages with the click of a button.

The information that you learn through scraping can be put to use in all kinds of ways, from knowing which gaps to fill with content, to improving internal processes or even finding great places to build links and follow your competitors. Here are five great things you can learn – about your competitors, your industry, or even your own website – by scraping the web.Read more...

You can’t control every little thing that is connected to your website, even if you do what you can to keep it immaculate from the inside. In other words, someone is eventually going to link to your site with the wrong URL or a user is going to type it into the browser incorrectly. What happens then? A 404 pops up.

Typically, this happens because a user has requested a particular web page from a server, but that web page does not exist or isn’t valid. As explained above, this often happens because of broken links, inaccurate links or incorrectly typed URLs in a browser. However, they can also happen internally from your website if one of your own web pages has a broken link or if a web page is removed. As far as 404 pages go, it may or may not be a better option, in terms of SEO, to provide a 301 redirect. It all depends upon why the page is being displayed.Read more...

You certainly wouldn’t be driving a car with an ancient transmission. So why are you still using search engine optimization tactics that were popular during the Internet equivalent of the Stone Age?

Too many businesses and bloggers adopt an SEO strategy early on in their online days and then never go back to tweak it as new research and case studies become available, showing more effective tactics to adopt. With search algorithms changing so frequently, it can be ineffective to continue with the same methods for years or even months at a time. Approaches that got great results initially quickly become outdated.Read more...

There are dangers to relying on guest blogging for SEO, most of those stemming from Google’s recent crackdown on link networks and the penalties associated with their usage. However, recently, MyBlogGuest, a different kind of link network that many marketers did not consider to be a link network at all, fell victim to Google. Check out the details below and learn a few tips for guest blogging the legitimate way.

MyBlogGuest

MyBlogGuest was created to help connect blogs looking for content with bloggers willing to provide it; a win-win situation for many companies, especially startups looking to get ahead with targeted marketing campaigns.Read more...

Changes in the Google algorithm and wild proclamations by Matt Cutts have turned this staple of search-engine optimization into a risky game. With Google making a concerted effort to snuff out the common SEO tactic, what kinds of content will continue to serve as successful link bait?

Glad you asked. While link building is harder than before, it’s not impossible. This guide will highlight five future-friendly techniques unlikely to be devalued or called into question by Google:Read more...

Ignite SEO is a search engine optimization package which includes many research, submission and reporting tools. Along with the standard keyword research, backlink and rank tracking and reporting, Ignite SEO includes some tools to submit comments and posts to various blog, forum and content management system software, with the aim to build valuable high-quality backlinks.

The Interface

Although Ignite SEO is not the easiest piece of software to use, with a little playing around and experimentation, anyone computer-savvy can soon be comfortable with using its many tools and features. Most of the tools are fairly self-explanatory and the main tools include a brief description. The documentation is well written, including all the information you need, but overall the interface could do with a little work, which I think would result in opening Ignite SEO’s market up to beginners and intermediate users, rather than just the more advanced computer and Internet users.Read more...